Emergency escape ladders are known in the prior art. For example, see the disclosures found in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,165,168; 1,910,546; 588,389; 289,220; and 119,161.
While emergency escape ladders are known in the prior art, they have many drawbacks and disadvantages, and as a result have not been widely accepted and used. In this regard, many emergency escape ladders of the prior art are very difficult to handle and use. Often these emergency escape ladders are not designed such that they can be easily hung from a window ledge or some associated structure in and around the area where the emergency escape ladder descends from. Emergency escape ladders of the prior art have been generally designed such that they are bulky, very difficult to handle and position, and require substantial area to store when not in use. Because of the design of such emergency escape ladders, the safety of them is also questionable. As a result, individuals have been reluctant to use such emergency escape ladders of the prior art.
Also emergency escape ladders of the prior art, as referred to above, are often designed to be compatible with one type of building design. Consequently the design is not universal and the applicability of the emergency escape ladder is very limited.
Finally some emergency escape ladders of the prior art are designed to be used to descend from a building from a single hanging of the ladder. Thus, in very tall structures such designs are totally impractical because of the length or height required for the ladder. A more reasonable approach, such as reflected in the present invention, is to provide a design that is capable of allowing an individual to move from one floor level to another floor level after which the entire ladder assembly can be repositioned for continuous descent.